Today is Thanksgiving Monday in Canada.  Yet in my mind Thanksgiving has always been an entire weekend of celebrating and enjoying the fall season. Before the accident and after the accident, my family essentially always celebrated the same way, just with different people at the table as my family changed so much.

As a child, as an adolescent and even as an adult, we celebrated Thanksgiving with a big family meal and enjoyed each others company.  Most often celebrated on Sunday afternoon, after church.  We all would eat too much.  But we would also all laugh, smile and sometimes even cry as we spent time with each other.

So for me, thanksgiving has also always been simply about spending time together as a family.

It’s a weekend where we are meant to set aside time to be thankful for our blessings, whatever they be.

A weekend where most people spend the day with loved ones, recognizing and celebrating their love for one and other.

Last year we decided our priority was to spend time focusing on our future family and so we decided to skip thanksgiving to go to NYC to see Dr. Braverman in search of our future child.  Ultimately, that weekend we started to clearly see our path through the mess that had taken over our lives (i.e. recurrent pregnancy loss).  While not the point of this post, I have to say, last years thanksgiving was not at all what I expected and yet I am so grateful for our decision to stop trying and to pursue adoption.  Although at times I am frustrated by the wait, I can honestly say on the whole I feel more complete and content today knowing that we will eventually have a child.  For the first time in a long time, today I know in my heart that it will happen, it’s just a matter of time.

So, after last year, I was really excited to join back into my family tradition of thanksgiving.   I’m not typically a nostalgic person, but for some reason thanksgiving was really important to me this year.  In fact, my dedication to my families big thanksgiving dinner made Mr. MPB wonder if I’d fallen off my rocker on more then one occasion.  Simply, I was excited to see everyone and really wanted to hug my nephews, play silly games with them, and hear their cute stories.  I simply cannot get enough of those two little guys. I wanted to talk with all my siblings.  I really wanted to see my step-grandparents and my parents.

And so, as I mentioned last week I was pretty disappointed when my parents planed a time that simply didn’t work for us.  And then to make everything even worse, at the very last minute, our friends cancelled on us.  Sadly, without even enough notice for us to rush and safely drive to my parents.

And so, by mid-day on Saturday I was less then happy as I prepared myself to miss everything.

In fact I was getting more and more bitter about it until I remembered that no where in my memories of thanksgiving do I remember being told to focus on being bitter and un-thankful.  Nor does it say anywhere that thanksgiving is about being annoyed and frustrated, or hurt and disappointed.

So, I made a point not get down about missing the family celebration and not seeing our friends.  Because really, the holiday is about being thankful for what you do have not being bitter an annoyed by what you don’t have.  So, I checked my attitude at the door and we spent our weekend surrounded by our chosen family of amazing friends.  We went to a farmer’s market and ran into friends with their newborn baby and I happily survived the encounter (I did not hold the little tiny baby, but I did say hi, admired how adorable the baby is and happily played with their 3 year old son).  We even had some time to putter around the house, vote in the advanced polls for the Canadian federal election, walk the dog, go for a run, and I even got a head start on some work.  At the last minute we invited another great friend over for dinner on Sunday evening for a yummy leg of lamb (I meant to take photos, but we accidentally devoured the amazing meal before I remembered to take a single photo).  And, while I had planned to work today, instead we are now we are on our way to enjoy brunch with some other friends.

It has been a wonderful weekend.  And you know what, I would change a single thing about it!

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend filled with love and laughter!  And, I really hope all my Canadian friends are enjoying a relaxing extra day off!

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